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<h1><a href="/"><span>Universal Feed Parser</span></a></h1>
<p><span>Parse RSS and Atom feeds in Python.  3000 unit tests.  Open source.</span></p>
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<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/feedparser/"><span>Download</span></a> ·</li>
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<p id="breadcrumb">You are here: <a href="index.html">Documentation</a> → <a href="advanced.html">Advanced Features</a> → <span class="thispage">Content Normalization</span></p>
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<a name="advanced.normalization" class="skip" href="#advanced.normalization" title="link to this section"><img src="images/permalink.gif" alt="[link]" title="link to this section" width="8" height="9"></a> Content Normalization</h2></div>
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<h3 class="title"></h3>
<p><span class="application">Universal Feed Parser</span> can parse many different types of feeds: Atom, <acronym title="Channel Definition Format">CDF</acronym>, and nine different versions of <acronym title="Rich Site Summary">RSS</acronym>.  You should not be forced to learn the differences between these formats.  <span class="application">Universal Feed Parser</span> does its best to ensure that you can treat all feeds the same way, regardless of format or version.</p>
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<p>You can access the basic elements of an Atom feed using <acronym title="Rich Site Summary">RSS</acronym> terminology.</p>
<div class="example">
<a name="example.atom.as.rss" class="skip" href="#example.atom.as.rss" title="link to this example"><img src="images/permalink.gif" alt="[link]" title="link to this example" width="8" height="9"></a> <h3 class="title">Example: Accessing an Atom feed as an <acronym title="Rich Site Summary">RSS</acronym> feed</h3>
<pre class="screen"><tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput"><font color='navy'><b>import</b></font> feedparser</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">d = feedparser.parse('<a href="http://feedparser.org/docs/examples/atom10.xml">http://feedparser.org/docs/examples/atom10.xml</a>')</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">d[<font color='olive'>'channel'</font>][<font color='olive'>'title'</font>]</span>
<span class="computeroutput">u'Sample Feed'</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">d[<font color='olive'>'channel'</font>][<font color='olive'>'link'</font>]</span>
<span class="computeroutput">u'http://example.org/'</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">d[<font color='olive'>'channel'</font>][<font color='olive'>'description'</font>]</span>
<span class="computeroutput">u'For documentation &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt;</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">len(d[<font color='olive'>'items'</font>])</span>
<span class="computeroutput">1</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">e = d[<font color='olive'>'items'</font>][0]</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">e[<font color='olive'>'title'</font>]</span>
<span class="computeroutput">u'First entry title'</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">e[<font color='olive'>'link'</font>]</span>
<span class="computeroutput">u'http://example.org/entry/3'</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">e[<font color='olive'>'description'</font>]</span>
<span class="computeroutput">u'Watch out for nasty tricks'</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">e[<font color='olive'>'author'</font>]</span>
<span class="computeroutput">u'Mark Pilgrim (mark@example.org)'</span></pre>
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<p>The same thing works in reverse: you can access <acronym title="Rich Site Summary">RSS</acronym> feeds as if they were Atom feeds.</p>
<div class="example">
<a name="example.rss.as.atom" class="skip" href="#example.rss.as.atom" title="link to this example"><img src="images/permalink.gif" alt="[link]" title="link to this example" width="8" height="9"></a> <h3 class="title">Example: Accessing an <acronym title="Rich Site Summary">RSS</acronym> feed as an Atom feed</h3>
<pre class="screen"><tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput"><font color='navy'><b>import</b></font> feedparser</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">d = feedparser.parse('<a href="http://feedparser.org/docs/examples/rss20.xml">http://feedparser.org/docs/examples/rss20.xml</a>')</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">d.feed.subtitle_detail</span>
<span class="computeroutput">{'type': 'text/html',
 'base': 'http://feedparser.org/docs/examples/rss20.xml',
 'language': None,
 'value': u'For documentation &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt;'}</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">len(d.entries)</span>
<span class="computeroutput">1</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">e = d.entries[0]</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">e.links</span>
<span class="computeroutput">[{'rel': 'alternate',
  'type': 'text/html',
  'href': u'http://example.org/item/1'}]</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">e.summary_detail</span>
<span class="computeroutput">{'type': 'text/html',
 'base': 'http://feedparser.org/docs/examples/rss20.xml',
 'language': u'en',
 'value': u'Watch out for &lt;span&gt;nasty tricks&lt;/span&gt;'}</span>
<tt class="prompt">&gt;&gt;&gt; </tt><span class="userinput">e.updated_parsed</span>
<span class="computeroutput">(2002, 9, 5, 0, 0, 1, 3, 248, 0)</span></pre>
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<a name="id4956983"></a><table class="note" border="0" summary="">
<tr><td rowspan="2" align="center" valign="top" width="1%"><img src="images/note.png" alt="Note" title="" width="24" height="24"></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" align="left" valign="top" width="99%">For more examples of how <span class="application">Universal Feed Parser</span> normalizes content from different formats, see <a href="annotated-examples.html" title="Annotated Examples">Annotated Examples</a>.</td></tr>
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